Well, the situation is that Lilly, whom I told yesterday that I had gotten off the plasma bus nearby the Quarter, because I had been told I had to come back the next day by them, instead of them buying 690 milliliters of my plasma, said she would buy me a set of guitar strings.
I had decided to walk around the Quarter, picking up money, tobacco, weed and drinks off of, what turned out to be the most successfully, Royal Street.
So, she basically culled from me that I was going to buy a bag of superfood powder to powder over the next few days, out of whatever plasma money I got, along with guitar strings, to answer her question of why I don't play in front of her house.
It used to be that I would have about even odds of making the same $55 that a 3 hour excursion to the plasma place would yield (minus the $2.50 bus fare) with 3 hours of playing in front of her house, but things have been "different" since about a year ago, now.
My Venmo card, which had been injected with $50 by a friend named John, who's in Green Bay, whom I met at the Lilly Pad, probably during the latter years of The Drinking Age, perhaps 2013-2014, has had its balance whittled down via a roll of toilet paper here, and a lighter there..
I only vaguely remember the night, but I'm sure that, at the mention of Wisconsin, I related how, Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan are about the only states that all the people I've met from were really cool people. Granted, it's a small sample, but, even when driving a cab in Phoenix in 1999, I remember bringing a couple, who were from Iowa, to the Bank One Ballpark, or as I called it, the 3 hour nap in an 72 degree environment chamber.
I would pay for one of the cheapest, highest up seats, in a spot where, even if a fouled off ball reached it would have already popped so high as to be almost it its apogee, so it would land, if it did, like a feather on my head, and hardly disturb me as I slept.
I would park my cab in the 113 degree parking lot then go to the window and ask for "a four dollar ticket."
And that would place me somewhere along the very top row. The roof would be closed overhead, and it would be 72 degrees, which would, probably not surprisingly feel nice and cool after coming in from the desert.
It got so the sound of the crack of a bat and a crowd cheering became like a lullaby; and it was easy to imagine being back in childhood and having fallen asleep while your dad is watching the Red Sox on TV. That can be quality sleep.
There were times, though, that I actually became intrigued by the game and would keep my eyes peeled for empty seats further down. As the game started, it was often possible to move down halfway to the field and sit in the $25 seat of someone who got a flat tire, or something, type of thing....
But, driving the cab during the 110 degree season, you have to have the windows rolled up and the A/C running constantly. You even should park in the shade while you are in between fares, as you will notice a few degrees difference. The 3 hours in the ballpark was a nice break from the constantly running cab.
Even the cave that I was living in, in the hills of Dobbins Peak would exhibit the phenomenon of heating up like a brick oven about 2 hours after the sun went down during this season.
My theory about that: There was a rock about the size of a Winnebago "protecting" me from the sun. My cave was in the shadow of that rock, plus two that were stacked upon it like a doughnut ring, one about the size of a jeep and a rowboat sized one on top of that, and what was happening was the rock was absorbing heat from the sun on the other side of it, but it took that wave of heat a few hours to make its way through the rock to the wall of my cave, which would start radiating heat from around 11:30 through midnight.
I would crawl outside and sit under the stars at these times.
There were mice everywhere, finding God knows what, to eat. The couple of candles I kept lit inside the cave kept them out.
There was also about a 4 foot diamondback rattlesnake that liked to go under a certain rock that I became aware of one night when walking too close to it on my return from the store.
Once I knew it was under there, I thought about how, as soon as darkness falls, which happens abruptly -there being little moisture in the air to reflect the sun, making for almost no dusk (nor dawn) just darkness as soon as the sun disappears, the mice immediately appear.
It was already so dark that I had to strain to see them, so, just as a marker, I once dropped a corn chip, which I could see.
I saw it instantly begin moving off in a certain direction. The next dozen or so chips I dropped also "got legs" as soon as they hit the ground.
So, I thought about this and waited until right before dark and dropped a handful of chips in front of the rock, and sure enough, in the waning light I learned that diamondback rattlesnakes don't hesitate -they don't sit there, coiled up and think, what is that little greyish white thing that just scurried to within a foot of me? I wondered if the mouse would have to be there long enough for its body heat to be picked up by the pits in that particular viper. Maybe they see them glowing infra red with their eyes, also...(will have to Google that).
But, yeah the diamondback ate well and was never coiled up and rattling in my cave whenever I crawled in, and it was a beautiful experience. I was 350 feet above the city, by my calculations. Six miles in front of me, were all the tall building of the downtown area. At night I could see the planes coming in to land at Sky Harbour and they would all be in a row, zeroed in by auto-correct, no doubt, but it looked like a string of pearls, each set of lights separated by probably about 6 miles..
During the day I would be surrounded by squirrels, as I always kept my backpack stocked with a large bag of unsalted, un-roasted peanuts.
But, back to the point, I remember that particular couple from Cedar Rapids (I think they said) being avid conversationalists and disarming enough in their happy-go-lucky demeanor that I was able to tell them stories about living in the cave, and driving a cab with a shirt and tie on. They were typical of all the other people I've met from Iowa.
At the mention of Green Bay, I might have told John about how I once worked with a guy in Ponte Vedra Beach, who was from Wisconsin, and who had found himself there after having done a database search on U.S. cities and weighed the data on wages, quality of life, is there public transportation, a pro football team there? etc.
And, I had just arrived there after living in Charlottesville for about a year, after having found it the same way. Ethnic mixture, is there a college, is there a gym, how clean is the water, is there a symphony orchestra...a pro sports team?
So, I guess that ties it back to John, who sent me $50 that has been toilet papered and lighter-ed down a bit, as I am still negotiating the trip up north to see family and friends, waiting for my brother and his family to return from Disneyland, and knowing that after such an arduous round trip, the discussion of them spending more money on a ticket to get me there becomes more strained, perhaps. Or, he could be just rolling in money, I don't know....
